Manchester United are a very silly football team after bonkers 6-2 win over Leeds - The Warm-Up
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Updated 21/12/2020 at 09:14 GMT
Ole's at the wheel again, as Manchester United dismantle Leeds in giddy fashion, thanks to unlikely hero Scott McTominay. AC Milan are also scoring early goals. Extremely early. Marcus Rashford receives a special award for being great. And a shoutout to a goal that never was, courtesy of James Maddison.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer celebrates
Image credit: Getty Images
MONDAY'S BIG STORIES
Who are you, and what have you done with Scott McTominay?
Manchester United against Leeds. The resumption of one of English football's great rivalries. A grand occasion, one to stir the soul and heat the blood. Two clubs—
Hang on! Scott McTominay's scored. One minute gone.
As we were saying. Two clubs that hate losing almost as much as they hate one another. The team that brought Eric Cantona to England and won the league, against the team that pinched him and won everything for two decades. The—
Wait! Scott McTominay's scored again. That's two in three minutes. You, er, weren't expecting anything sensible, were you?
Sunday afternoon at Old Trafford was, in essence, a perfect match-up for the neutral, as Leeds play high-risk, high-reward football: it can be brilliant, but it always gives the opposition a chance to construct their own brilliance. Helpful Leeds, as the old saying goes. As for the home side, we suspect that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer might like his side to be a little more predictable, week to week. But everybody else will take this.
In the end, it was also a perfect match-up for Manchester United, a team with a plan. Time and again they span past their markers and, as if by magic, great green spaces yawned wide before them. Helped, too, that McTominay had asked his barber for a short back and sides and then a splash of Romário Pour Homme.
So that's United - inconsistent, can't really defend, no settled first team or formation, cocked up all their transfer business, managed by a PE teacher - up to third with a game in hand. Weird season, sure, but maybe we all owe Ole Gunnar Solskjaer at least a qualified apology. For the moment, at least. Until something else strange happens.
And, of course, this game plus Liverpool's 7-0 stuffing of Crystal Palace presents the perfect chance to spend a few moments with the results from Boxing Day, 1963. Imagine if you'd been at Leicester vs. Everton. The whole First Division is melting all over the country, and you're stuck at a normal game of football.
And they're off
Unless you're Stuart Pearce, then there is something deeply satisfying about goals straight from kick-off. It's the immediate chaos we love: everybody's plans gone all to pieces after just a few seconds. Keep things tight, lads! Talk to each other! Pick up— Oh, damn.
The Warm-Up bows to nobody in our affection for Zlatan Ibrahimović, and that whole 'pretending to be a lion to hide what a nerd he is' thing he does. (Yeah. You heard us, Zlatan.) But let's be honest, the big man's not sprinting past the defender the way Rafael Leão does here.
That sets a new record for the fastest goal in Serie A history. And the subsequent victory offers hope that AC Milan, after their tremendous start to the season, might be able to navigate this sudden injury crisis. At the very least, we can say that Ibrahimović's absence — and that of Simon Kjær, Ismaël Bennacer, Sandro Tonali, and the rest — hasn't led to a sudden outbreak of playing it safe.
Nice one, Marcus
Another ordinary day in the world of Marcus Rashford. Thrash Leeds in the afternoon, then pick up a special award for extreme good works in the evening. He's probably improving the covid vaccine as you read this, just to fill the time.
Rashford wasn't eligible for the main Sports Personality of the Year award, on account of Manchester United being just too damn exciting for the squares at the BBC. But his campaigning for the extension of free school meals to Britain's children, which has forced not one but two u-turns from the government, merited an Expert Panel SPecial Award. You don't get medals for that. But you do get a small silver television camera.
And even better than that, Rashford also receives the ongoing admiration of the Warm-Up. Elite footballers, on the whole, are ordinary people who make the most of extraordinary talents, and it's easy to assume that at some point in that process they lose sight of the shape of the world outside. Rashford, along with plenty others, has spent this year proving that theory wrong. Power to him.
IN OTHER NEWS
Disgraceful coolness from Tobin Heath here, a shot so smooth it becomes that most beautiful of things: cricket. A firm check drive, up and over the fielder; an easy three. Murmurs of appreciation. A shiver of applause. The sun is high, the clouds are light, the breeze is faint and cool. Perhaps this summer will never end.
IN THE CHANNELS
An official statement from James Maddison on VAR, which took a beautiful goal away from him yesterday. A beautiful festive goal, no less: a first touch that tasted of Christmas pudding and a finish of flaming brandy. Obvious solution here, James: shave your armpits?
HAT TIP
None of the games ended 6-2, which was probably for the best. But back in the 1991-92 seasons, the two Uniteds of Leeds and Manchester played one another three times in as many weeks. The trilogy, they called it. "Utter hatred", Alex Ferguson called it. Miguel Delaney looks back for the Independent.
Because for all that the War of the Roses is raised as the root of the rivalry, it is actually relatively recent, probably only going as far back as [the FA Cup semi-final of] 1964-65] … The game devolved from one bad Nobby Stiles tackle on Albert Johanneson. Skirmishes broke out, which spread to the stands and the streets around Hillsborough, as well as the replay at the City Ground. Billy Bremner eventually won that, but Man United won the title, as Leeds finished runners-up in both the league and FA Cup.
COMING UP
The Premier League completes the weekend with Burnley vs. Wolves and then Chelsea vs. West Ham. A win for West Ham would take them above Chelsea, which is not how anybody thought this season was going to go.
Yeah, AC Milan, that's nice, but Marcus Foley once scored a goal within four seconds of kick-off. And he'll be here with The Warm-Up tomorrow.
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